On Friday 31 July, the Cypriot parliament voted against the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with Canada. This latest development in the ratification process of CETA illustrates perfectly how facultative mixity continuously frustrates our collective interest in seeing the...
The Italian Supreme Court of Cassation sez. I Civile, case n. 10300/20 (registered on May 29th), puts a hold on the proliferation of copyright protection and reasons that technical writings by lawyers - when functional to the provision of typical forensic services - cannot be protected. An attorney...
On 16 July 2020, the Court of Justice (Court) handed down its judgment on the long-anticipated Schrems II case. The saga began with Schrems I case, in which the Court ruled upon an Adequacy Decision, the EU-US Safe Harbour Decision, which aim was to facilitate the transfer of personal data to the...
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is arguably one of the biggest crises of modern times. The conflict between the search for a vaccine, and the artificial scarcity created by patent law, has created a catch-22 situation. How will patent law apply to a vaccine under these circumstances?
Several pharmaceutical companies all around the world, including in the European Union (EU), have been racing to find a treatment for the virus. Since these may be subject to patent rights, government intervention may be needed.
Jean Monnet (1888-1979) is, in some ways, an unlikely person to be honoured by having a university hall called after him. Indeed, Monnet left school at the age of sixteen, never obtained a university degree, and indeed never started university studies. He grew up in the city of Cognac as the son of...
To get photos of celebrities, paparazzi photographers wait for their targets to end up in the frame. They believe that the minute they released the shutter, the pictures are copyright protected. They don’t know that they might (un)knowingly or (un)intentionally breach someone’s right to privacy.
Sometimes cases come along in which several unusual suspects come together. JF v EUCAP Somalia (T-194/20), for which the notification was published last Monday in the Official Journal, is one of them. In this case, a British national’s contract with the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP)...
The rise of e-commerce has resulted in a sharp increase of counterfeit products in the market. The new US Shop Safe Bill introduces liability for online marketplaces, but only in case of counterfeit products that are risky for consumers, which makes this bill a preventive health measure for...
Stay at home. Wash your hands frequently with soap and water. These simple indications could help save lives and flatten the coronavirus curve. Unfortunately, things are not so simple for the almost 39,000 asylum-seeking men, women, and children, among them thousands of unaccompanied children...
